Habitat boosts neighborhood

Habitat for Humanity's latest project in Albany is also its biggest

Updated 7:27 am, Thursday, December 20, 2012

"Morton's Walk", a production of the Habitat for Humanity, Capital District was dedicated today in Albany, N.Y. Dec. 19, 2012. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

"Morton's Walk", a production of the Habitat for Humanity, Capital District was dedicated today in Albany, N.Y. Dec. 19, 2012. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

Photo: Skip Dickstein

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Owners of 41 Alexander Street, Nam Thigi Thein, left Daniel Thein, right and Sam Michael, center received their keys on"Morton's Walk", a production of the Habitat for Humanity, Capital District which was dedicated today in Albany, N.Y. Dec. 19, 2012. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union) less

Owners of 41 Alexander Street, Nam Thigi Thein, left Daniel Thein, right and Sam Michael, center received their keys on"Morton's Walk", a production of the Habitat for Humanity, Capital District which was ... more

Photo: Skip Dickstein

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Morris Morton, the project namesake of "Morton's Walk", a production of the Habitat for Humanity, Capital District speaks during Thursday's dedication in Albany, N.Y. Dec. 19, 2012. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

Morris Morton, the project namesake of "Morton's Walk", a production of the Habitat for Humanity, Capital District speaks during Thursday's dedication in Albany, N.Y. Dec. 19, 2012. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

Photo: Skip Dickstein

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Mike Jacobson, Executive Director, Habitat for Humaniy, speaks about "Morton's Walk", a production of the Habitat for Humanity, Capital District which was dedicated today in Albany, N.Y. Dec. 19, 2012. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union) less

Mike Jacobson, Executive Director, Habitat for Humaniy, speaks about "Morton's Walk", a production of the Habitat for Humanity, Capital District which was dedicated today in Albany, N.Y. Dec. 19, 2012. (Skip ... more

Photo: Skip Dickstein

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Morris Morton, the project namesake of "Morton's Walk", a production of the Habitat for Humanity, Capital District speaks during todays dedication in Albany, N.Y. Dec. 19, 2012. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

Morris Morton, the project namesake of "Morton's Walk", a production of the Habitat for Humanity, Capital District speaks during todays dedication in Albany, N.Y. Dec. 19, 2012. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

Photo: Skip Dickstein

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Owner of 43 Alexander Street Luverne Patterson stands in the living room of her new home with her daughter Esther Patterson 5 on "Morton's Walk", a production of the Habitat for Humanity, Capital District which was dedicated in Albany, N.Y. Dec. 19, 2012. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union) less

Owner of 43 Alexander Street Luverne Patterson stands in the living room of her new home with her daughter Esther Patterson 5 on "Morton's Walk", a production of the Habitat for Humanity, Capital District which ... more

Photo: Skip Dickstein

Habitat boosts neighborhood

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ALBANY — To Lloyd Patterson, the neat two-story row house he was handed the keys to Wednesday represents more than just the first home his family has owned since immigrating from Guyana more than a decade ago.

For Patterson, those keys represented the opportunity for a tangible brick-and-mortar legacy — and a chance to show his two youngest children the value of his skill in the building trades.

"It's a blessing that as a father I can be able to have an inheritance for my children — and grandchildren," said Patterson, 52, who along with his wife, Luverne, works as a certified nursing assistant at the Albany County Nursing Home.

The Pattersons' Alexander Street home was one of 10 dedicated Wednesday by Capital District Habitat for Humanity, the first wave of what was at its inception was the most ambitious redevelopment project in the nonprofit's nearly 25-year history in the city.

Two more homes have been completed on nearby Delaware Street, with four more there expected to be finished next month.

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In all, Morton's Walk will total 16 new homes, most of them on a block of Alexander Street that five years ago unwittingly became a symbol of the blight scarring some of the city's most needy neighborhoods.

The stretch of 10 row houses between Elizabeth and Clinton streets rose over the last 17 months on the site of a mass 2007 demolition that cost Rebecca and Richard Lawson their home of 30 years and became a rallying point for the city redouble its efforts to battle neighborhood decay.

The plan represented a fundamental change of course for Habitat, which at that point had built fewer than a handful homes a year in the city, focusing on "safe, simple, decent" in-fill housing without a larger blueprint.

Alexander Street is proof that the new blueprint can work, Mayor Jerry Jennings said.

"You know what we have here?" Jennings said. "We have a game plan that we can implement anywhere else in the city."

Wednesday's dedication comes as Habitat for Humanity is poised to embark on an even more ambitious plan to remake a large chunk of Sheridan Hollow, a largely forgotten neighborhood just below Arbor Hill.

Ground is expected to be broken on that project — the first phase of which includes 20 new one- and two-family homes, apartments and commercial space — in April.

"We asked for a lot of money and a lot of faith because we believed we could build something like this," Capital District Habitat Executive Director Michael Jacobson, who joined the organization in fall 2010 after six years running a Florida affiliate, reflected Wednesday. "But we had to prove it."

The project received nearly $1 million in low-income housing money from the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal as well as a nearly $200,000 boost from the city, officials said. At least five of the properties were acquired with the help of Albany County. Dozens of companies donated time, money and materials, including First Niagara bank, which Jacobson said floated a line of credit that helped get the project off the ground.

The homes cost roughly $100,000 each to build and were then sold to Habitat's selected buyers at cost with no-interest mortgages held by the nonprofit, Jacobson said.

The city also used federal housing money to help the new homeowners make their down payments, said Michael Yevoli, the city's commissioner of development and planning.

Overall, Jacobson pegged the cost of the project between $2.5 million and $2.6 million on top of the sweat equity of the new owners.

Instead of the utilitarian designs that marked Habitat projects in years' past, the Morton's Walk homes — named for the prominent South End family that still lives in the neighborhood and donated a number of the properties to make the project possible — were designed to closely match the South End's 19th-century architecture.

Common Council President Carolyn McLaughlin, a longtime representative of the neighborhood, said the health of any city can be judged by the condition of all of its neighborhoods, not just the well-off.

"Teddy Roosevelt once said many years ago that a city is not fit for anyone to live in unless it's fit for everyone to live in," McLaughlin noted.

LaTrenda Buchanon, 41, a state worker who was among the first to move into the new homes in March, learned her application had been accepted by Habitat while grocery shopping. It meant her family could move out of its cramped, expensive apartment complex and spread out in a place of its own for the first time, the mother of two said.

"I was in the frozen-food aisle and I'm getting ready to leave my cart and run out because I'm so ecstatic," Buchanon recalled.